Daily ArchivesNovember 7, 2022

Everyone loves free shipping. It’s a great way to encourage customers to buy in the moment and helps you level the playing field against larger online stores. And if you’re hesitating, just remember that customers have a choice. When faced with a site adding a “$5 shipping charge” or one with “Free shipping included” which one would you choose?

As a small to medium-size business, free shipping should be in your marketing toolbox, so I’m going to show you how to offer free shipping on your WooCommerce site, and how to set up a WooCommerce free shipping coupon.

Why Should You Offer Free Shipping?

The offer of free shipping can win customers, but it can also be expensive for small business owners. Shipping costs are a key factor, however, when your customer is deciding whether to buy your product.

Studies have shown that online shoppers value “Free shipping” much more than a discount coupon — even if the price works out the same. Customers are often willing to accept longer delivery times if it means they avoid paying for shipping.

And a survey by SmartInsights showed that 61% of online shoppers abandon their cart if they discover a shipping charge has been added to their purchase. Customers object to paying extra for shipping as they look on it as part of the whole online shopping experience.

On the other hand, some customers are happy to pay premium shipping charges if they want an item to arrive quickly. You can use this premium option to offset those free shipping costs, and reduce the hit on your profit margins. A lack of shipping options is another reason for abandoned carts.

So a popular choice for business owners is “Free shipping with conditions” — and 60% of ecommerce sites say it’s their top marketing tool.

How do these tools and options benefit your business?

How to Offer Free Shipping Without Losing Money

There are several ways to offer free shipping and the easiest to set up is free shipping on everything you sell. Another option that lessens the impact on your business is to only offer this at specific times of the year like during a spring sale or around major holidays.

But as a startup or small to medium-size business, it’s not always possible to offer free shipping across your product range — especially on big-ticket items. If you ship goods around the world, you already know international shipping is expensive, but domestic shipping costs can also be high to places like Hawaii, the Caribbean, or Alaska.

By offering “Free shipping with conditions” — for example, free shipping once you spend a certain amount — you can still attract customers and offset the cost to you. WooCommerce makes this easy to do. You can set up your WooCommerce site to offer free shipping after a minimum purchase amount. This will encourage your customer to add something extra to get their goods shipped free. Or offer free shipping on specific, low cost-shipping product lines, or if consumers buy multiples of items.

Another way to generate sales using free shipping is by offering discount coupons or loyalty programs to your email subscribers or your social media tribe.

Testing Free Shipping

If you are not sure whether free shipping is going to be profitable for your business, there are a few ways you can test it.

To launch a meaningful test, you need to know your base cost and profit margins for every product, and you must factor in the cost of shipping heavy items. Once you know the size and weight of your big items, check with your preferred shipping agents for accurate costs.

Set up an A/B test that offers free shipping only on certain products. For example, you could start with your top-selling items and compare conversion rates between the customers offered free shipping and those who weren’t.

For the “Free with conditions” option, you could slowly increase your minimum free-shipping order value and again compare margins.

Another obvious way to absorb free shipping costs is by increasing the price of all your products and then comparing conversion and sales. The risk here is that you could make your products too expensive in your market.

Although it takes up valuable time, by continually testing your free shipping options you’ll quickly identify the methods that are the most profitable for your business, and the ones to avoid. What matters is to do something about it – the cost of not presenting attractive shipping options is too high.

Benefits of Free Shipping

Your customers are more likely to buy if there are no hidden surprises when they check out. Free shipping reduces cart abandonment.

There’s also the potential bonus for you if the customer adds an extra item to meet the minimum amount and claim their free shipping. And by offering free shipping with longer delivery times, you reduce the pressure on your business to ship fast. You can take advantage of lower costs offered by shipping agents.

Results from a comScore survey showed that many customers will onlybuy from online stores offering free shipping. This is not surprising when you consider the massive choice of online stores, and how easy it is to compare suppliers. By marketing your free shipping to this customer demographic, you can increase your conversion rate and build a loyal following.

So, let’s dive in and work through how to set up WooCommerce free shipping options.

Free Shipping: How to Set up for Everything You Sell

Go to your WooCommerce menu Settings > Shipping. Select theShipping zone.

Click on Add shipping method.

Select the Free shipping option from the menu. Configure the Free Shipping option by selecting N/A. Save your changes. Your customers will now get free shipping with every purchase they make on your store.

Free Shipping: How to Set up With a Minimum Spend

Select the Shipping zone.

Select the Free shipping Settings.

Enter a title e.g., Free shipping with minimum spend.

Enter the minimum amount your customer must spend and/or the free shipping conditions. Save changes. Customers will get free shipping when they spend the minimum amount, use a coupon, or use a combination.

How to Set up Free Shipping Coupons

You should think of discount coupons as another tool in your marketing strategy. It’s a way to mix up your marketing promotions.

You can:

• Send coupons to your social media followers and email subscribers to say thank you for following your business or individual products.
• Add coupons to your newsletters or use them as part of your email marketing campaigns.
• Encourage past customers to return and buy again. This can be very effective if you time-limit the coupon to create a sense of urgency e.g., valid for 24 hours only.

To offer a WooCommerce free shipping coupon, you need to enable this feature on your dashboard.

On the WooCommerce menu, go to Settings > General.

Check the box Enable the use of coupons codes.

Save changes. Once you’ve enabled the use of coupon codes, you can go ahead and create individual coupons. Go to your WooCommerce menu Settings > Coupons. Select Add Coupon then configure the settings.

Here are some of the choices you’ll need to make as you create your coupon.

Coupon Code: Your customer will enter the code at checkout to claim their free shipping. Therefore, every coupon you create must have a unique name or number.

Description: This is optional and only visible to you, not the customer. If you want, you can use it to add useful notes. You might add promotion details, start or end date, or the subscriber list.

Discount type: You can set a percentage discount for specific products, a fixed cart discount that offers a discount on the total value of the customer’s cart, or a fixed product discount, which offers a fixed discount (in dollars) per item.

Coupon amount: To set the amount of the discount you want to offer, simply enter a basic number. It doesn’t need a currency or percent symbol. WooCommerce will adjust the cart automatically depending on the type of discount you set e.g., 15 for 15% or $15.

Allow free shipping: This gives the customer free shipping when the coupon is used. Enable “Free shipping” to use this feature.

Coupon expiry date: This option allows you to set a date after which the coupon is no longer valid.

Coupon Usage Restrictions

This screen allows you to set a variety of options to restrict how the coupon can be used.

You can exclude sale or individual products or specify items that must be purchased in order to qualify for free shipping.

Here are definitions for the options available.

Minimum spend: The amount your customer must spend to use the coupon.
Maximum spend: A maximum amount allowed using the coupon.
Individual use only: Prevents customers from combining this offer with other coupons.
Exclude sale items: Prevents customers from applying the coupon to sale items.
Products: Specifies products that must be in the cart to allow the coupon to be used.
Exclude products: Specifies products that may not be included in the coupon discount.
Product categories: Specifies product categories the coupon can be used for, or that must be in the cart for the coupon discount to work.
Exclude categories: Specifies product categories that the coupon cannot be used for (i.e. they must not be in the cart).
Allowed emails: Specifies email address(es) that can use the coupon.

Usage Limit

Usage limit per coupon: Specifies the number of times a coupon can be applied.
Limit usage to X items: Specifies a maximum number of items to which the coupon can be applied.
Usage limit per user: Specifies the number of times a customer can use the coupon.

Hit Publish to save your settings.

Congratulations! Your coupon is now ready for use.

Test Free Shipping to Help Your Business Grow

With careful planning, offering WooCommerce free shipping on all or some product lines can provide startups and small to medium-size businesses several benefits:

• Build trust and customer loyalty
• Boost online sales
• Increase conversion rates

Nothing is guaranteed, but WooCommerce makes it easy to test a free shipping offer, assess the results, and determine the mix of discounts and charges that’s optimal for your business.

Grow Your Ecommerce Business With Managed WooCommerce Hosting

In addition to the shipping strategies we’ve listed here, a great hosting plan can be instrumental to growing your business. Fortunately, Hostdedi has you covered.

Our fully managed WooCommerce hosting plans are ideal for growing businesses. Specially designed to convert more sales, the plan is packed with cutting-edge technologies to reduce query load times and cart abandonment rates.

To learn more about fully managed WooCommerce hosting, check out our plans today.

When warehousing your own inventory is not an option, dropshipping with WooCommerce can be a great way to get your online store rolling.

In this guide, we’ll walk through setting up three specific kinds of dropshipping stores to help you understand how to put dropshipping with WooCommerce to work for you.

The kinds of stores we will set up are a:

• T-Shirt store
• Dropshipped product additions to your digital offering store
• Cell phone accessories store

But first, let’s make sure we’re on the same page when using the term dropshipping.

What is WooCommerce Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a form of ecommerce where you, as the retailer, do not warehouse your store’s inventory; rather you have a dropshipping agreement with your chosen wholesaler(s) who handle the warehousing, picking, packing, and shipping of your store’s products for you.

Dropshipping has developed rapidly in the last 10 years as ecommerce giants such as Amazon have proven that there’s plenty of market share for online fulfillment services. And now, if you’re planning to dropship, WooCommerce makes it easier than ever.

How Dropshipping Works

In a dropshipping arrangement, as new orders are placed in your WooCommerce store, your wholesaler is emailed packaging instructions (and perhaps a printable packing slip), and they put the product into the hands of your customer.

You are, of course, responsible for paying the wholesaler their portion of the retail price for delivering a quality product to your customer and on your previously agreed upon timeline.

Benefits of Dropshipping

WooCommerce dropshipping comes with a high ceiling of upsides. Here are just a few of the benefits site owners experience:

• Lower Upfront Costs – Since you won’t have to rent warehouse space, manufacture products, or buy in bulk, you’ll have less overhead and a lower investment. It’s shipping with WooCommerce made easy.
• Ability to Work Remotely – Dropshipping with WooCommerce gives you the flexibility to work from anywhere and on your own schedule.
• Scalable and Simple – The WooCommerce dropship plugin makes store management simple and easy to scale up or down based on traffic and demand.

Downsides of Dropshipping

While those reasons to consider WooCommerce dropshipping are enough to convince many digital entrepreneurs, it’s important to understand the limitations as well. Take a look at a couple of dropshipping’s downsides:

• Competitive and Saturated Market – Some products have many online stores vying for dropship opportunities. With these saturated markets, it can be tough to stay ahead.
• Slimmer Margins – Since you’re paying your supplier to maintain and deliver the product, you may not have as big of margins over time. It’s a trade-off for not having to make as big of an infrastructure investment upfront.

How to Find Products to Dropship

To make sure you don’t enter an overly-saturated market, do your homework before choosing a product to dropship. Here are some questions to ask yourself before committing to a product:

• Do I have the product knowledge to successfully market this?
• Is there already a large community of dropshippers fighting over this market?
• What are the margins like?
• Do I have a supplier in mind that can meet my needs and scale with my business?
• What type of products will I enjoy selling, and in turn enjoying growing a business with?

Why Use WooCommerce for Dropshipping

Dropshipping with WooCommerce is a win-win partnership that drives revenue for both site owners and wholesalers. Entrepreneurs across industries are choosing to dropship because of its flexibility, affordability, and opportunities for profit.

Because WooCommerce is a plugin from WordPress, entrepreneurs find that their products don’t fall into the same restrictions, terms, or policies that other platforms may have. They also find that the SEO capabilities from WordPress are easily applied to their WooCommerce stores, allowing them to rank higher on search.

The foundation of dropshipping success lies in the relationship between you and your suppliers, which is ideally a mutually beneficial arrangement. Thanks to you selling their wares, the wholesaler saves on marketing costs for finding customers and you don’t have to warehouse your store’s stock, which significantly lowers your store’s startup cost. Invest your resources in relationships with quality dropshippers because their performance reflects directly on your business in a dropshipping arrangement.

Now that you’re starting to understand dropshipping and how it works, you’re likely looking for some specific examples. Below, we’ll walk you through three examples of dropshipping with WooCommerce.

Let’s guide you through setting up those three WooCommerce dropshipping stores.

How to Set Up Your WooCommerce Store for Dropshipping

First, let’s take a look at the basics of how to set up a WooCommerce store. Then we’ll walk through three in-depth example stores.

1. Create a Website and Domain

Use WordPress to build your site as simple or as complex as you like. Powering the majority of websites on the internet, WordPress is easy to use and flexible enough to give you the features your business demands.

You’ll then need to purchase a domain name. This can be done through Google Domains or a number of low-cost domain providers.

2. Choose a Hosting Provider

Next, choose the hosting provider that’s right for your business. Your hosting provider is responsible for keeping your site running fast and smooth, regardless of changes in traffic. Hostdedi offers managed hosting for WooCommerce that is fast, scalable, and secure.

3. Install the WooCommerce Plugin

The WooCommerce plugin is what gives your WordPress site ecommerce functionality. The step-by-step instructions are coming up at the top of our first example store. And a bit later, we’ll show you how to add the WooCommerce dropship plugin that will connect you to suppliers.

Store 1: Build Your Own WooCommerce Dropshipping T-Shirt Shop

In this section, we’re going to walk through the process of setting up your own dropshipping T-shirt store by combining WooCommerce with Printful.

Install WooCommerce

1. While logged into your WordPress backend, in the left-hand navigation column, hover over Plugins, then click on Add New.
2. Type “WooCommerce” into the search bar in the upper right of your screen and hit enter
3. Click the Install Now button.
4. You will see a message at the top of the screen saying: Plugin Activated and in your left-hand navigation column, you’ll see two additional Menus, WooCommerce & Products.

Complete the WooCommerce Setup Wizard

1. Toggle off both options, because shipping will be handled through Printful.
2. Change the weight unit to lbs.
3. Change the dimension unit to in.
4. Click the purple Continue button.

Skip the Recommended Options Step

Setup Wizard Complete! Now Click the Gray Button Titled: Review Settings

Activate the Legacy API in WooCommerce

1. Hover over the WooCommerce menu, and click Settings.
2. Click the far right tab, titled: Advanced.
3. Now click the Legacy API link.
4. Check this box to enable the legacy API.
5. Hit the blue Save Changes button.
6. You’ll see a message saying: Your settings have been saved.

Check Your Permalink Settings: Anything But Plain Will Work With Printful

1. Hover over the Settings menu.
2. Click on Permalinks.
3. Set the structure as anything other than the default; I use Post name.
4. Now scroll to the bottom of this screen and click the blue button titled Save Changes.
5. Be sure you get the confirmation message at the top of the screen saying: Permalink structure updated.

Install the Printful Plugin on Your WooCommerce Store

1. Upper right, type Printful into the search box and hit enter.
2. Click the Install Now button.
3. Then click the blue Activate button that replaces it.
4. You will see a message Plugin Activated and just below the Products menu item, you’ll see a new Printful menu item, click the Printful menu.

Go to Printful.com and Click the “Red Connect Your Shop” Button

To sign up for Printful, enter the following information.

1. Your name.
2. Your email address.
3. Choose your password to login to your Printful account.
4. Click the red Sign up button.

Your Account Created, Now Head to Your Email Inbox to Confirm Your Email Address

Now Go to Your WooCommerce Store to Connect WooCommerce to Printful

1. Click on the Printful menu item.

2. Then click the blue Connect button.

This Will Open The Application Authentication Request

1. Verify that you are signing in with your correct account.
2. Click the purple Approve button.

Click the Red Continue Button

Use the Printful account you just set up.

Now You’re Ready to Design Your First T-Shirt

Click “design products” to get started.

Click the Gray Add Button to Add Your 1st Product

Choose T-Shirt to Create Your Mockup

1. Click on T-shirt in the left column to sort your options.
2. Now choose the T-shirt you want to use to create your first product mockup.

Upload Your Design File

Your design file should be 12×16 inches and 300 dpi (digital pixels per inch). The size and dpi combination are important for your design to print clearly and not be pixelated and blurry.

1. Click the upload file tab.
2. Click the red choose file button.
3. On the next screen, click the gray button to the right, titled Upload.
4. Then you’ll need to check the box that you understand and accept these conditions, followed by clicking the red button titled: I accept.

Terms and Conditions to Upload

T-Shirt Store – Product List | Printful

Set Your Shipping Options In WooCommerce Settings

1. Hover over WooCommerce and click Settings.
2. Click the Shipping tab.
3. Click the Printful Shipping link.
4. Check this box to enable Printful shipping.
5. Click the blue Save changes button.

Set Your Printful Shipping Setup in the Printful Plugin

1. Click the Printful menu item.
2. Click the Settings tab.
3. Make sure all the Standard shipping options you wish to offer are checked.
4. Make sure all the Expedited shipping options you wish to offer are checked.
5. Click the blue Save changes button.

Now You’re Ready For Your Last Three Steps

1. Add your card in Printful, so that as T-shirts are sold, they will charge your card and immediately start printing rather than Printful holding the order while awaiting payment.
2. Enter your Stripe keys to start accepting payments via customer’s choice of credit card in your WooCommerce store.
3. Add the rest of your products and let people know about your new T-shirt store!

Store 2: Add a Couple of Products to Supplement Your Digital Store Offering Utilizing Dropshipping

Perhaps you want to offer an upsell to customers of your thousand dollar video course, where for a flat thirty-bucks, they can get a USB drive of your course videos dropshipped to their designated shipping address.

This allows them to watch your videos while they’re offline.

In this case, the WooCommerce Dropshipping plugin over at WooCommerce.com will take care of your dropshipping needs. The plugin subscription, for both updates and support, starts at $49.00 per store each year.

Once You Buy WooCommerce Dropshipping Plugin, It’s Time to Install It

1. Hover over Plugins in the left-hand navigation column and click on Add New.
2. Click the Upload Plugin button.
3. Click the Choose File button to select the plugin zip file on your computer.
4. Click the Install Now button.
5. When you see the message that the Plugin was installed successfully, click the blue Activate Plugin button.
6. You will see a message saying: Plugin activated.

Add Your Dropshipping Supplier

1. Hover over Products and click on Suppliers.
2. Enter the name of your supplier.
3. Replicate the name as the slug (the specified URL minus the domain).
4. Describe the supplier relationship/offering.
5. If you have an account number with your supplier, enter it here, leave blank if not.
6. Enter the email address(es) to be notified when this supplier’s products sell in your store.
7. Click the blue Add New Dropshipping Supplier button.

Now You See The Blue Inventory CSV Button

1. When your supplier provides you with a CSV file for importing their product(s) into your store, this is the button you use to import their products.
2. If no CSV file is provided, you will need to create the supplier’s product(s) and assign each product to the dropshipping supplier as you create the product.

Assigning a Supplier

1. To add a new Product, hover over the Products menu, then click Add New.
2. Scroll down and in the far right column, you’ll see a drop-down to choose the Dropshipping Supplier for this product.
3. Be sure to scroll back up to publish/save your changes so the product is assigned to the proper supplier.

Set Up Your Packing Slip

When an order in your WooCommerce store is paid for by your customer and WooCommerce marks the order as processing, then this plugin emails each supplier whose products were ordered to notify them to ship the products.

1. Hover over WooCommerce and click Settings.
2. Click the emails tab.
3. Click the Dropshipping Notifications link.
4. The email message is sent to the dropshipping supplier, with the PDF packing slip attached.
5. Upload your logo to your media manager and copy and paste the file’s URL and then below that, input the width of your logo, in pixels.
6. Add your company name and address.
7. Add your customer service email address and phone number.
8. Add a thank you message to the packing slip.
9. Configure your inventory pad to protect you from selling products that the supplier has run out of. With a pad of 5 set, that means that once there are only 5 of the product inventory left, your store will show the product as sold out in order to not sell products the supplier no longer has in stock.
10. Click the blue Save changes button.
11. You will see a message saying that your settings have been changed.

Now you’re all set to sell your USB drive of your videos to your course students. But what if you have bigger dropshipping aspirations for your WooCommerce store? What if you want much more than a small inventory supplementing your digital product(s)?

Store 3: Open Your Own Cell Phone Accessories Store

Install WooCommerce

1. While logged into your WordPress backend, in the left-hand navigation column, hover over Plugins, then click on Add New.
2. Type “WooCommerce” into the search bar in the upper right of your screen and hit enter
3. Click the Install Now button.
4. You will see a message at the top of the screen saying: Plugin Activated and in your left-hand navigation column, you’ll see two additional Menus, WooCommerce & Products.
5. Head to WooDropship.com and Click the Red Get Started For Free Button.

Create Your WooDropship Account

1. Choose your username. I make my email address my username so I don’t forget.
2. Choose your account password.
3. Your email address.
4. Click the orange Get Started button.

Which Will Bring You to Your Dashboard

5. Click the Connect Store button.

6. Which brings you to this tab to connect your store.

7. Enter the URL for your WooCommerce store.

8. Click the green Connect Shop button.

Application Authentication Request

9. Verify that you are connecting your correct account.

10. Click the purple Approve button.

Which Returns You to the Dashboard

11. Verify that your store was successfully connected.

12. Click the link to add the WooDropship Chrome Extension.

Click the Add Extension Button of the Popup Window

Configure Your Updates Settings

13. Click the Settings menu in the left-hand column.

14. Now click the Updates tab.

15. When a product disappears, unpublish product.

16. When a variant disappears, remove variant.

17. When a cost changes, update automatically.

18. When inventory changes, update automatically.

19. Click the green Save Settings button.

20. You will see a green message saying Settings updated.

Back at Your Dashboard, You’re Ready to Add Your First Aliexpress Product Using the WooDropship Chrome Extension

21. Click the Go To Aliexpress button to head over to Aliexpress. You will not need an account with Aliexpress thanks to the Woodropship Google Chrome extension.

Start By Choosing Your Product Category

Followed by the Specific Product to Add to Your Store

Now You’re Ready to Employ the WooDropship Google Chrome Extension

22. This product search was for Screen Protectors for Apple iPhone.

23. While hovering over the product you want to sell, click the orange button.

24. Which will show this message that the product is being imported.

25. Followed by confirmation that the product was successfully added to the import list (If you don’t see this message, it means the product is not on your import list, so if you use Ghostery or other ad blockers, you will want to turn it off for aliexpress.com).

Now Head Over to Your WooDropship Dashboard

26. Hover over Products in the lefthand navigation column and click on Import List.

27. Verify and edit the product’s title prior to pushing the product into your WooCommerce store.

28. Assign a Product Category.

29. Click the Description tab to edit the product description.

30. Click the Variants tab to verify the variants and adjust pricing prior to pushing the product into Woo.

31. Click the Images tab to check the product images.

32. Click the green Push Product button to send the product over to your WooCommerce store.

Success! So It’s Now Displayed Under My Products

Now You’re Ready for Your Last Three Steps:

33. Add your card in WooDropship.com, so that as items sell, they will charge your card and immediately start rather than Printful holding the order while awaiting payment.

34. Enter your Stripe keys to start accepting payments via customer’s choice of credit card in your WooCommerce store.

35. Add the rest of your inventory from Aliexpress and let people know about your new Cell phone Accessories store!

Get Your Store Started on WooCommerce

Launching your own store starts by finding the right products. You’ll need to know your audience and competitors. And you’ll want to understand your ideal customer — the one that’ll anxiously track their shipment and Instagram the package’s un-boxing.

Get your store setup, stocked, and open for business with WooCommerce and select a host that will keep your store up and running on the backend — regardless of traffic fluctuations.

Hostdedi offers fully managed hosting for WooCommerce designed for fast, high-performing stores. Hostdedi also:

• Offers high performance and site speed.
• Dynamically scales and optimizes.
• Secures your store with always-on monitoring.

See why we have a 4.6 out of 5 star rating on TrustPilot. Check out our plans to get started today.

It’s natural to be curious about the cheapest way to ship a package when your customers want free deliveries more than fast ones.

The State of Ecommerce 2021 Study confirmed the average customer prefers free over fast. In fact, 59% of consumers said free shipping was key to a positive online shopping experience, while only 40% said the same about fast delivery.

However, ecommerce business owners have more than just the customer’s preference to worry about. With the COVID-induced disruption in logistics and the labor shortage, free deliveries are now slower, and fast deliveries are more expensive.

As a business, you still need to keep your costs to a minimum. With that in mind, we’ll explain what the cheapest way to ship a package is so you can trim your costs while earning some points with your customers.

Factors That Impact Shipping Costs

Your package’s shipping costs depend on various factors, so there’s no one go-to service that’s the cheapest. You’ll need to look at these factors every time you want to ship a package to determine what the cheapest way to ship the package is.

1. Delivery Speed

While many of your customers will select free delivery over fast delivery, a good portion of customers will still want their deliveries fast.

Naturally, the faster you want to deliver, the more you’ll pay. All shipping services offer multiple shipping options, including fast deliveries, so you can select one based on how fast you want to deliver.

For example, if you want to deliver a package under 10 lbs within 2–3 days, USPS Priority Mail is your best bet, but FedEx or UPS offer better rates for heavier packages.

2. Weight

Heavier packages cost more to ship.

For example, for packages under one pound, USPS First Class Mail or USPS Media Mail (if you sell physical media) is your best bet. On the other hand, FedEx and UPS Ground offer better rates for shipping a heavy package (more than one pound but less than 10 pounds).

3. Size

Shipping prices for oversized packages are higher because they take up more space. That’s why a two-pound package can sometimes cost more than a three-pound package — you packed the goods in a bigger box.

USPS Priority Mail, First Class Mail envelopes, and flat rate envelopes cost the least when you want to ship small packages. Alternatively, you can select cubic pricing with USPS Priority Mail (provided the package is under 20 lbs) or pay as per the dimensional weight.

Chubic rate pricing and dimensional weight are opposites. With cubic rate pricing, you pay a reduced rate for heavy but small parcels. In contrast, with dimensional weight, you pay more if the dimensional weight exceeds the real weight.

Here are the formulas for both metrics:

Cubic Feet = (Length x Width x Height) / 1728

Dimensional Weight = (Length x Width x Height) / Divisor

Shipping carriers use a different divisor for calculating the dimensional weight:

• Divisor for USPS: 166
• Divisor for FedEx: 139
• Divisor for UPS: 139

You might want to try using FedEx’s dimensional weight calculator to understand the concept a little better.

Since USPS has the largest divisor, it’s the cheapest option under dimensional weight pricing.

4. Distance

The U.S. has eight shipping zones. The farther your zone is from the destination zone, the higher the shipping rates. The cost of shipping is even higher for international shipping.

You can save money on shipping by setting up warehouses across shipping zones. A well-spread distribution center network also helps you deliver packages faster.

Naturally, setting up a distribution center network is generally viable only for larger companies. If your sales volume is low, you won’t save enough on shipping to offset the costs of owning and maintaining multiple distribution centers.

5. Other Factors

Other factors like insurance, handling fees, and delivery guarantees cost extra. The pricing for these also differs among delivery services, so you might want to look up their costs before settling on a shipping company.

When figuring out the cheapest way to ship a package, you need to consider several variables, and things can get confusing quickly. So let’s look at your cheapest shipping option based on two of the most important factors: speed and weight.

The Cheapest Ways To Ship Packages Based on Delivery Speed

Short delivery times translate to happy customers. However, you need to find an affordable shipping method to keep your costs minimal.

To help you achieve that, let’s explore the cheapest way to ship a package based on the delivery speed below.

Cheapest Way To Ship a Package for Overnight Delivery

Overnight deliveries are expensive, no matter which shipping solution you choose. The cheapest option among major carriers is the USPS Priority Mail Express service.

The service guarantees one-day delivery but sometimes has a two-day delivery window. That means your customers won’t receive the delivery after a business day even if they wish to.

Another problem with USPS Priority Mail Express is that they’re not as reliable as FedEx or UPS with overnight delivery. The guarantee essentially means they’ll refund the money for late delivery. That doesn’t help you much when you need to answer your customers.

USPS will save you money, but it’s your decision whether the low cost makes up for a few upset customers. You might also choose to decide based on your broader shipping strategy.

Cheapest Way To Ship a Package With a Two-Day+ Delivery Window

USPS Priority Mail is the cheapest option for two-day shipping or longer delivery times. However, it’s best when you have more leeway in terms of delivery time. While USPS claims that the typical delivery time is 2–3 days, the delivery time could vary significantly in some cases.

If you can’t afford to deliver late, it’s best to spend a little extra and ship the package via FedEx or UPS.

The cost is considerably higher than what you’d pay the U.S. Postal Service, but FedEx and UPS guarantee delivery times, which is excellent if you want to ensure complete customer satisfaction.

Cheapest Way To Ship a Package Based on Weight

Weight is another factor to consider when determining the cheapest way to ship a package. Things get a tad more involved when you factor in dimensional weight, but we explain everything you need to know below.

Cheapest Way To Ship a Package Lighter Than Two Pounds

In general, USPS shipping offers the best rates for packages under two pounds. USPS First Class Mail will cost you the least when your item weighs one pound or lower. However, use USPS First Class Mail only if you’re not too concerned about reliability.

FedEx and UPS are cheaper for packages that weigh between one and two pounds, provided you can escape the dimensional weight penalty. In other cases, you’ll still find USPS to be the most cost-effective.

Cheapest Way To Ship a Package Heavier Than Two Pounds

FedEx Ground or UPS Ground is generally cheaper for heavy items. Among the two shippers, you might be able to save a little extra with FedEx because it usually provides a discount for signing up online.

The only problem is when FedEx and UPS look at a package’s dimensional weight. For example, if you’re shipping a 10-pound item in a large box (15 x 15 x 15), FedEx or UPS will assume the rate to be 24.28 lbs, calculated as:

(15 x 15 x 15) / 139

You might need to reassess the rates if you incur a dimensional weight penalty (which applies on packages larger than three cubic feet or 5184 cubic inches).

But there are a few other exceptions here. USPS flat rate shipping rates can be cheaper in some cases.

For example, you’ll save money with USPS flat rate packages if:

• You can fit a package lighter than two pounds into a USPS Priority Mail small flat rate box.
• You can fit a package heavier than two pounds and lighter than three pounds into a USPS Priority Mail flat rate medium box.
• You can fit a package heavier than five pounds into a USPS Priority Mail flat rate large box.

In any other scenarios besides those listed above, you’ll want to go with FedEx or UPS Ground.

Final Thoughts: The Cheapest Way To Ship a Package for Ecommerce Businesses

You want to ship packages quickly and for as little money as possible. But as a small business, margins are crucial to survival and securing your bottom line, so you need to find the right balance between speed and cost.

In any case, it’s best not to only look at the price. Finding a cheap shipping option can save you plenty of money, but you should also consider the implicit costs of using an unreliable service.

Now that you know what the cheapest way to ship a package is, you’re in a better position to pick between the U.S. Post Office, FedEx, and UPS based on the specifics of the package.

While you’re thinking about keeping costs down, try Hostdedi’ StoreBuilder — a pocket-friendly, intuitive, WordPress-based ecommerce website builder.

Check it out to get started today.

Webinar will provide foolproof, last-minute guidance ahead of Black Friday/Cyber Monday for online store owners.

ATLANTA, GA. Nov 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Hostdedi, the premium provider of managed hosting and cloud solutions optimized for managed WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento, announced today an exclusive online masterclass with Recapture (recapture.io), a leading provider of email automation solutions specifically tailored for revenue recovery from abandoned online shopping carts.

This masterclass will be Wednesday, November 9th at 1 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, free of charge.

Abandoned cart expert Dave Rodenbaugh, founder of Recapture, will lead online store owners through battle-tested strategies for preparing Black Friday/Cyber Monday abandoned cart campaigns.

Dave Rodenbaugh is the founder of Recapture.io, an abandoned cart and SMS/email marketing service for WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, Easy Digital Downloads, Restrict Content Pro, and more. This experience gives Rodenbaugh access to best practices gleaned from a wide spectrum of online ecommerce, membership, and SaaS businesses.

In this presentation, Rodenbaugh will share the top mistakes that online stores make every season. He’ll show the three things stores need to know in order to get the most out of their abandoned cart recovery campaigns during the busy holiday shopping season.

Rodenbaugh will provide attendees with a special guide — complete with customizable content templates — to get started as quickly as possible using the techniques they’ll learn in this masterclass.

The partnership brings together Hostdedi’ highly performant managed hosting solutions with the specialized ability of Recapture to help store owners increase revenue.

“Recapture’s #1 mission is to make store owners more successful and this time of year is beyond critical.  We see so much value left on the table and we know how to fix it in abandoned cart recovery,” says Dave Rodenbaugh, “I’m excited to make a difference and find areas to improve that will have a massive impact on their business.”

Founded in 2015, Recapture has processed over $2 billion in gross merchant volume (GMV) and recovered over $218,000,000 for stores worldwide.

Hostdedi was founded in 2000 with the goal of building fast hosting for the most powerful ecommerce and content applications. They grew into a global hosting platform known for deep ecommerce hosting expertise and a passion for helping their customers. As a company within The Liquid Web Family of Brands, they collectively manage 10 global data centers, have more than 500,000+ sites under management, and serve over 170,000 paying and 2.5 million freemium software customers spanning 150 countries.

“We’re thrilled to partner with high-quality solutions like Recapture to deliver tangible results for our store owners,” says Ken Wallace, product innovation manager at Hostdedi. “We continuously push to be more than just a host for our SMBs and Creators who trust their mission-critical stores with us. When the WooCommerce and Magento stores we host win, we win.”

Store owners can register for the masterclass here.

To learn more about Recapture, visit recapture.io. For more information about Hostdedi, visit nexcess.net.

It goes without saying that online shopping is one of the most popular pastimes in the world. Consumers around the world spend more than 2.3 billion hours shopping online. However, the average person spends less than 54 seconds on a website.

If your online store is slow, unresponsive, and unattractive, potential customers will leave fast. As a result, ecommerce user experience should be a top priority for store owners. By investing in ecommerce UX, you can create a better shopping experience that will keep customers coming back.

In this guide, we’ll cover the importance of UX for ecommerce, ecommerce UX tips, and the signs that your store needs a facelift.

What is ecommerce user experience?

User experience (UX) for ecommerce refers to how customers interact with your online store. It encompasses everything from the design of your website to the way users navigate through your product pages.

A good UX is essential for keeping customers engaged. Studies have shown that even a small improvement in UX can lead to a significant increase in sales. On the other hand, a poor user experience will drive potential customers away.

The user experience of an ecommerce website is much different than a normal website. Visitors come to online stores expecting to buy something rather than browse information. There are several factors that contribute to ecommerce UX. Let’s take a look at some of the most important ones.

Key user experience factors for ecommerce websites

Navigation

The average person has a short attention span and is easily distracted. This means that they’re likely to click away from your website if they can’t find what they’re looking for quickly and easily.

Your website’s navigation should be clear and intuitive, so users can find what they’re searching for with minimal effort. If your navigation is confusing or cluttered, consider simplifying it.

Speed

In today’s fast-paced world, people are accustomed to websites loading quickly. They expect online stores to load within two seconds. A website load time slower than that is bound to bleed dollars by the day.

There are several ways to improve the speed of your website, including optimizing images and using a content delivery network (CDN). By increasing the speed of your site, you’ll give users a better experience and improve your chances of making a sale.

Mobile-friendliness

Mobile ecommerce is growing rapidly, and it’s important to make sure your website is optimized for mobile users. Mobile users have different needs and expectations than desktop users. For example, they may be looking for something quickly while on the go.

It’s important to design your website with these needs in mind. If you don’t, you could lose out on mobile sales. By optimizing your ecommerce UX for mobile users, you can ensure that they have a positive experience on your site and are more likely to make a purchase.

To make sure your website is mobile-friendly, start by checking the design. Is it easy to navigate on a small screen? Are the buttons large enough to click without accidentally tapping something else? If not, you may need to make some changes.

Checkout process

The checkout process should be quick and easy. If it’s too long or complicated, customers may get frustrated and abandon their cart. Our guide to ecommerce payment processing should help you refine your checkout process and decrease shopping cart abandonment.

Customer service

You should offer excellent customer service in case anything goes wrong during the purchase process. If something does go awry, customers will need a way to reach you so they can get help. This could be in the form of a phone number or live chat.

Poor customer service can lead to lost sales and frustrated customers. By offering excellent customer service, you can ensure that customers have a positive experience on your site and are more likely to make a purchase.

Signs that your online store has a poor user experience

Successful online stores combine seamless navigation with a breathtaking design. If your website is experiencing these issues, it may be time to reconsider your store’s ecommerce UX design.

Abandoned carts

Shopping cart abandonment is when someone adds items to their cart but doesn’t complete the purchase. If you’re noticing a high number of abandoned carts, it may be time to take a closer look at your ecommerce UX design. There are several reasons why customers might abandon their cart, but one of the most common is a poor user experience.

For example, if your website is slow or difficult to navigate, customers may get frustrated and decide to leave without completing their purchase. Or, if they can’t find the information they’re looking for, they may give up and go to another store.

Another way to reduce shopping cart abandonment is by offering free shipping. This encourages customers to complete their purchase because they know they won’t have to pay more than the purchase price.

Low conversion rates

Low conversions rates are a direct sign that your website is missing the mark. If shoppers are visiting your website but leaving before they make micro- or macro-conversions, it’s possible they’re not happy with their experience.

Website bounces

Bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your website after only viewing one page. A high bounce rate indicates poor ecommerce user experience, whether it’s a slow loading time, a confusing design or lack of relevant information.

By improving your ecommerce UX, you can reduce your bounce rate and keep potential customers engaged with your store.

Direct user feedback

Sometimes, a website’s UX is so poor that visitors will make their frustrations known. If you’re getting direct feedback from users that your website is difficult to use, it’s a sign that you need to improve your ecommerce UX design.

Listening to user feedback is an important part of improving your website. By making changes based on what users tell you, you can make your website more user-friendly and increase the chances of making a sale.

How ecommerce UX drives conversion

Investing in UX is important for improving ecommerce conversion rate. In other words, it can help you turn website visitors into paying customers.

UX can impact conversion in many ways. We already mentioned bounce rate and abandoned and cart abandonment, but average order value and dwell time are also key performance metrics.

Average order value

Good ecommerce UX drives conversion by increasing average order value. This refers to the amount of money that a customer spends on each purchase.

There are several ways to increase average order value, but one of the most effective is upselling. Upselling is when you offer customers additional products that complement the ones they’re already buying. 

For example, if someone is buying a pair of shoes from your store, you might suggest they add a pair of socks to their order. By suggesting complementary products, you can encourage customers to spend more money and increase your average order value.

Dwell time

Dwell time is the amount of time that a person spends on your website. It’s a good indicator of how engaged someone is with your store.

The longer someone spends on your site, the more likely they are to make a purchase. This is because they have more time to look at products, compare prices, and read reviews. 

You can improve dwell time by making sure your website loads quickly and by adding relevant and interesting content. 

For example, you might include product videos or blog posts on your website. By providing users with an engaging experience, you can encourage them to stay on your site for longer and increase the chances of making a sale.

Product page user experience

Finally, the product page is one of the most important pages on your ecommerce website. This is where customers will learn more about your products and decide whether or not to make a purchase.

Here are a few things you can do to create the best product pages for your store:

• Include high-quality photos and videos
• Write clear and concise descriptions
• Offer multiple online payment methods
• Provide customer reviews and ratings

By improving the user experience of your product pages, you can increase sales and boost conversions.

If you’re ready to build a website that promotes top-notch ecommerce user experience, there’s no better ecommerce storebuilder than StoreBuilder by Hostdedi. Start with Hostdedi to build your ecommerce site today.